


The Ice Is Thin

by mona1347, poisontaster



Series: Every Broken Thing [19]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Between Seasons/Series, Jossed, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-06
Updated: 2006-05-06
Packaged: 2018-05-11 14:19:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5629507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mona1347/pseuds/mona1347, https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Sam in the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ice Is Thin

**Author's Note:**

> This was written after S1 had aired but before the show had even been renewed for S2. So obviously, it doesn't *quite* go along with canon. Just play along and pretend with us, okay?

_The ice is thin come on dive in_  
_Underneath my lucid skin_  
_The cold is lost, forgotten_  
_Hours pass days pass time stands still_  
_Light gets dark and darkness fills_  
_My secret heart forbidden_

_I think you worried for me then_  
_The subtle ways that I’d give in but I know_  
_You liked the show_  
_Tied down to this bed of shame_  
_You tried to move around the pain but oh_  
_Your soul is anchored_

_The only comfort is the moving of the river_  
_You enter into me, a lie upon your lips_  
_Offer what you can, I’ll take all that I can get_  
_Only a fool’s here_

_I don’t like your tragic sighs_  
_As if your God has passed you by…_  
~ "Ice," Sarah McLachlan

 

The minute Dean can walk again, he drags himself out of bed and to Sam's room and just stands there, tilting against the doorframe, watching Sam sleep with hungry-crazy eyes. Bobby tries to talk to him, convince him to go back to bed, but Dean's having none of it, clinging to the jamb with fingertips still white from blood loss and tension.

Finally, Bobby drags a chair in from the kitchen and puts it in the doorway but Dean just shakes his head--keeps shaking it--and tries to drag himself and the chair closer to the bed. Finally, Bobby gets it and moves the chair; holds Dean's arm and moves him right next to Sam.

Dean sinks into the chair and lays his forehead down on top of the covers, the crown of his head touching Sam's flank and holds one of Sam's huge hands in both of his own. Maybe he sleeps. Maybe he just stays there, bowed over like he's praying. Like he's praying harder than any stigmata-afflicted virgin saint could ever hope to do, lost in the ecstasy of grief and longing and fucked-up, twisted, last-thing-he-has hope.

Once, Bobby catches him -- hears him when he doesn't know Bobby's standing just outside the bedroom door -- murmuring ceaselessly, repetitively. So softly that no one could hear but Sam, if Sam were conscious.

He whispers, "Sam… Sam… Sammy, please. You promised. Dying counts, Sam, and you promised. You _promised_ me. Don't leave. Don't leave me."

Bobby thinks that must be a prayer as good as any other, because eventually, Sam opens his eyes. Turns his head and rasps softly, "Dean?"

Dean shudders out one long breath. His whole body shaking, so much air rushing out that he must have been holding it ever since…who knows how long. " _Sammy…_ "

Like it was the only word in all of God's creation.

~~~~

It takes Sam three days to realize that Dean hasn't said one word to anyone but him since Sam made The Demon let him go at the cabin. Since; "Go check on him" and "Don't you do it. Sam, no."

It's like Dean's...dimmed. He doesn't smile or laugh. His lips go up at the corners sometimes at something Bobby says or when the new, big, mean-looking dog comes bounding up and slobbers all over him with joy in the early mornings. But it doesn't go to his eyes. Never to his eyes.

Sam finds himself racking his brain for jokes, pranks, stupid funny things that he did at school or from their shared childhood. Anything. Anything to try and bring even the tiniest spark of life back into Dean's face, to make that smile more than painted on.

Even with Sam, Dean barely talks, and never if Bobby or anyone else is around. Short, soft sentences that make Sam instinctively lean towards Dean every time he speaks. Like the words will just dematerialize if Sam doesn't catch them. Like Dean might.

Insubstantial, that's the word.

Sam's never seen Dean so insubstantial before.

~~~~

Dean crawls into the bed with him the night Sam wakes up and every night thereafter. He wraps himself around Sam's body like some psychotic version of those stuffed monkeys with the Velcro on their paws. Always on the side closest to the door.

He murmurs into Sam's hair; nonsense mostly, but sometimes, broken twisted things like, "I'm scared" or "How…how can he be gone? Is he really gone?" or "Mom's the one who started calling you Sammy". Things like "She used to hold both of us on her lap and we'd sing to you. You had no hair. She smelled like almonds. I told you that a long time ago but I don't think you remember" or "Sammy...I don't know what to do."

And Sam's glad the darkness hides his face.

But finally, one night, his throat burning and his face aching, Sam turns in Dean's arms and covers Dean's lips with his own.

They haven't…they _haven't_ ; not since that night on the rock, the night Sam thought might be the end of it all. At first, there'd been no time, and then later, no privacy and no inclination, sunk in their own pain. But now all Sam can feel is Dean's hurt and he thinks—he feels—that if he can't _do_ something about it, he's going to crack up. So he kisses Dean and takes all those infrequent, rambling, shattered words into himself.

They're hurt; they're both still so damaged, physically, mentally, emotionally, but it's like something in them was just waiting for this, to be set off again like a powder keg, and Sam finds himself not minding the pain as Dean whimpers and tries to climb inside Sam's mouth, tries to climb inside _Sam_ , clinging and digging.

Sam's just as bad, trying to map, trying to reestablish the boundaries of flesh and muscle and bone that encompass the entirety of _Dean_ through taste and touch.

They're not strong enough for much; just the frantic push and thrust of flesh against flesh. Sam shoves his pajama pants halfway down his thighs, does the same for Dean while Dean kneads and scratches the skin of Sam's back, his ass, frantic and hungry.

The silence is strange, uneasy; Sam's used to Dean's voice, dirty and growling, and now the only voice is his own, hoarse and whispering as Dean desperately thrusts into the hollow of Sam's hip with choked off noises and gasps and moans.

Sam puts one hand on the back of Dean's neck and with the other he presses their cocks together, saying, "It's okay. I got you. I got you, Dean. Come on. It's okay."

 _"Sam—"_ Dean's voice is pained and gritty with disuse as he comes, a heated flood and just the sound of it is enough to send Sam hurtling after him. For the first time since they woke up here, at Bobby's, Sam thinks: _we're alive._

~~~~

Bobby's not a sentimental man, much, and he'll be the first to tell you so. Nonetheless, it does something to him to see those two boys wandering around his place like they're ghosts themselves. Just barely managing to not walk into the furniture and the walls and seeing everything with dead, burnt-out eyes.

He hadn't planned on giving them the journal quite so soon; they're safe enough here and God knows his Adah—may she rest in peace—would have had his hide if he'd sent him out like they are now.

Still, the look in Sam's eyes, wondering, amazed, tells him he made the right decision, when he hands it over. "Saved what I could," Bobby says, scratching the back of his neck and damned if he isn't blushing. "Knew you boys would want it."

"Thank you," Sam says, and the note in his voice makes Bobby's face burn that much brighter.

Dean just turns on his heel and vanishes into the back of the house.

~~~~

Dean won't look at Dad's journal.

He won't even lay his eyes upon it and just completely fucking forget about him touching it.

But Sam _can't stop_ touching it. Can't stop running his hands over his father's words. Tangible. _He Was Here. He Was Real._ Sam traces his fingertips over grooves carved in the shape of letters when Dad was particularly vehement about something.

It's Braille for his heart. Sam touches each letter of "demon" and "Lawrence" and "weapon" and "kill" and always...always etched deeper than anything else; "Sam", "Dean", "Mary."

They've used the book as a reference guide for so long Sam forgot that it started out as his Dad's actual _journal_ until he stopped being able to put it down; maybe the last existing repository of John Winchester's words. His voice.

He finally goes back and reads the beginning.

 _"I buried my wife today..."_ And, _"I keep going over that night in my head... I’m so sorry, Mary. I’m so sorry I let this happen to you."_

And then…

_"Dean still hardly talks… He never budges from my side - or from his brother's. Every morning when I wake up, Dean is inside the crib, arms wrapped around baby Sam, like he’s trying to protect him from whatever is out there in the night."_

Sam feels cold, then hot, then cold again as he realizes...this is what Dean does when it's finally, actually, really _too much_.

This is what Dean's always done. He wraps himself around Sam and retreats into silence.

And it's Sam's turn now. Sam's turn to take care of Dean.

Because Dean won't stop staring at him. Any moment Sam falls from Dean's vision, his head snaps around, his eyes flicker and blink in barely concealed panic until he can see Sam again. Sam takes to making sure he doesn't move outside the parabola of Dean's line of sight. He makes sure that he's constantly in orbit around Dean. Just like always but more carefully, deliberately, this time.

~~~~

When Sam can walk again, Dean puts his boots on and goes outside to the wreck of the Impala.

He still hasn't spoken more than a handful of words, all in the dark, when they're alone.

From the porch, Sam sees Dean sit down on the dusty ground of the yard, gently lean his forehead against the scratched black paint and cry in silence. Just tears, sparkling and reddening his eyes, running down his cheeks to drip onto what's left of the black paint and wash away tiny little circles of dust and pain. Without one sound.

Then Dean goes to find where Bobby keeps his tools.

Dean doesn't cry over Sam. He doesn't cry over Dad. But he cries over the fucking car. The car is what does it and Sam just thinks that's so goddamn appropriate it actually makes him smile for a minute. But the smile falls right off his face a moment later when he realizes that Dean only _can_ cry over the car.

That everything else is wounds that go too deep.

Finally, Sam comes down off the porch, grabs a wrench and set of screwdrivers and silently helps Dean. Fixes what he can.

~~~~

Random-ass Good Samaritans got them to the hospital. Sam finds a certain irony in that.

For a long time Sam has no idea why...It...let them live. Why it just didn't finish the job.

Then, sometime on the evening of the seventh day, it dawns on him in a cold wash of horror.

 _It wanted us to feel its teeth. It wants to hurt us more before it kills us. It took Dad, made that semi hit us at just the right angle. It_ took _Dad and now… It's not done hurting us yet._

_Which of the two of us is it going to go after next? It's picking us off, it's been picking us off one by one for the past twenty-three years and it has infinite fucking patience._

If it wins (if they lose), if it takes one of the last remaining Winchesters before it takes the other, Sam's started to hope that it's Dean ( _"my plans for you, Sammy. You and all the children like you."_ ) That if it's going to go down like that--not that Sam's going to roll over and lie down for any fucking demon without a hell of a fight--then for the first time ever, Sam hopes it's Dean and not him.

_Not you. I'll go first…_

Because he understands now--it would actually hurt Sam less to watch Dean die than to die himself and know what it will do to Dean. Sam just can't handle that train of thought at all so his brain circles back to, "I'm gonna kill this sonofabitch."

It serves to make him angry again and he _needs_ his anger.

The cycle of pain-fear-rage is starting to make the backs of Sam's eyes burn all the time now. Every turn of the wheel hurts like his broken cheekbone, a constant throb that's a dull ache and a sharp pain all at the same time.

~~~~

Sam finally gets it. He finally gets what Dean had to feel when he was four fucking years old (all I have all I have all I have) and... He just can't...

Sam doesn't know what to do any more than Dean does. He's rudderless, without the options of anger or flight. Without the constant inane, irritating prattle of Dean's voice to soothe him. There is only this white and screaming sorrow and Dean, pouring his heart out onto the ground in utter, horrifying silence.

All he has is Dean. Broken, _still breaking_ , Dean. Silent Dean.

Except in the dark. Except with Sam.

Dean speaks.


End file.
